In 2010, construction workers digging through the remains of the World Trade Center in New York City stumbled upon a startling discovery: a 30-foot long cargo ship. No one had any idea how it could get there, but now, nearly four years later, scientists are unveiling the vessel's secrets, including where it came from.
The most important thing to remember here is that this part of New York City wasn't always land. In the 1600s, this area contained wharves (flat structures used for unloading ships). Eventually, the city filled in this area, creating more land. Interestingly enough, much of the material used to do this were wooden structures, including wharves and abandoned ships. So it's very likely that sometime in the late 1700s, this ship became part of the landfill.
Unfortunately, there is no indication of whether the ship sank deliberately for this purpose, or if it suffered from an accident. However, scientists believe the ship was only around 20 to 30 years old when it went down. There was also evidence of worm damage to the ship's timbers, so researchers believe that this could have played a part in the ship's short life.
"I don't know much about the life expectancy for boats," said Dario Martin-Benito from Columbia's Tree Ring Lab. "But that doesn't seem like too long for something that would take so long to build."
Its short lifespan isn't the only mystery involving this sailing vessel, though. Scientists also wanted to know who built the ship and where. They learned the answers to these questions by studying the ship's wood. They looked at the tree-ring patterns in the wood. Specific tree ring patterns denote specific regions, allowing scientists to determine where the wood came from. For example, wet climates have thicker rings than dry climates.
Researchers discovered that the wood in the keel, the part of the ship that runs along the center from bow to stern, was hickory. This suggests that the location of the ship's building was somewhere in the eastern U.S., possibly Philadelphia.
"We could see that at that time in Philadelphia, there were still a lot of old-growth forests, and [they were] being logged for shipbuilding and building Independence Hall," Martin-Benito said. "Philadelphia was one of the most - if not the most - important shipbuilding cities in the U.S. at the time. And they had plenty of wood so it made lots of sense that the wood could come from there."
During the excavation, archaeologists also found ceramic dishes, bottles and shoes. But it was the discovery of the ship that helped them date these artifacts accordingly. Interestingly, this isn't the first ship to be discovered in New York. Archaeologists found an 18th-century cargo ship in Lower Manhattan in 1982. If more ships are discovered, we can only hope some type of interactive, scavenger map is concocted.
